


Waiting Game

by Othalla



Category: The Girl with All the Gifts (2016), The Girl with All the Gifts - M. R. Carey
Genre: Captivity, Gen, Insanity, Introspection, Loss of Control, Starvation, Zombie Children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 18:11:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17146598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Othalla/pseuds/Othalla
Summary: First they were Children.Then they were Hungry.





	Waiting Game

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DragonSteel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonSteel/gifts).



> Thanks to kutsushita and tigerbright for looking it over!

The Children woke up, like it was any other day. They sat themselves in their chairs, waiting to get guns in their faces and their limbs secured. Everything was normal, right up until the point when it wasn’t.

Melanie’s door hadn’t opened during Transit, and she wasn’t in the classroom either. The Children noticed and (worried) wondered, until the doors opened and Ms. Justineau came in to start their first lesson of the day. But instead, Ms. Justineau took one look around the classroom before she turned around and left, clipboard clattering on the concrete floor and double doors slapping shut behind her.

From the hall, they heard the sound of many people running and just as many people screaming. Then it grew quieter, receding further down the hallway until they could hear no sound at all except for the occasional breath and the humming of the fluorescent lights.

The Children were left alone in the classroom. Without Ms. Justineau. Without Melanie.

Strapped in their chairs, neatly deposited in their rows, there was no way to look but forward, and nothing to do but wait. The Children were good at waiting, so they weren’t worried. The adults never left for too long, though sometimes they’d be replaced like the pencils Ms. Justineau used to write with on her whiteboard.

And so, when the silence grew longer, and the doors stayed shut, they just sat there.

Ms. Justineau always came back, and the Children were certain she would now, too. (Melanie, they weren’t so sure about. Children who were Lost didn’t come back and they were never mentioned again.)

The Alarm rang, and still they waited. It wasn’t the first time the Children had heard it, and they knew what to do. (Shut the fuck up and _WAIT!_ )

The Alarm fell silent, and they waited. And they waited. And they _waited._

And they would have sat there, staring at the whiteboard (Ms. Justineau would come soon, the doors would swing open and the clipboard would be picked up and she’d tell them a story and sing them a song _and_ ) even longer, if the Hunger hadn’t come.

But come it did, and they all knew that the Hunger never left until it was satisfied.

-

The Hunger wasn’t satisfied. There was nothing to eat in the classroom, and so it ate the Children’s brains instead, tearing out reason like a gardener pulling weeds. But unlike a gardener, the Hunger was indiscriminate, ripping out everything by its roots, leaving the dirt bare and barren.

It salted the remains.

-

_They were Hungry._

-

The Children didn’t remember much, after the Hunger came. Later there was the ache in their jaws and the red skin around their wrists that never quite went away, but those weren’t memories, not really. They were possibilities, clues that the Children tried (but failed) not to consider deeply, of what might have happened when the Children were pushed aside in their own bodies and the Hunger took over.

The Hunger was a monster, they knew. A terrible, terrifying monster. It didn’t care about aching jaws or red skin. It didn’t care about the Children.

Only Ms. Justineau did that, and she wasn’t there.

(But they’d waited, _where was she?_ )

The doors swung open, but they didn’t notice.

-

[Melanie never forgot a thing, (e-i-d-e-t-i-c memory, Dr. Caldwell had called it, how intriguing), and she remembered the Children sitting in their classroom just as she remembered the way back there. She told Ms. Justineau to wait, and then she left to get them.]

-

[And when she found them, she fed them.]

-

The Hunger left slowly, in bits and pieces, one chair and Child at a time, until there were only Children in the classroom and no monsters lurking around the corner.

The Children collapsed back in their chairs, Hunger appeased and garden growing.

The doors swung open, and the Children tried to turn their heads to see who would come in.

-

It was Melanie. _Melanie_ was back. (Didn’t they lose her? Wasn’t she _lost? Where was Ms. Justineau?_ ) She stood with her spine straight in front of the desk, right where Ms. Justineau used to stand, and there was no adult pointing a gun at her head and no shouting and running steps down the hallway.

Her hands were free. There were no red marks on her wrists.

Melanie never did get quite as Hungry as the rest of them, but she looked like she didn’t even remember the _word_.

The Children didn’t understand.

They were always strapped in their chairs when they weren’t in their (Siobhan-twenty Anne seven KennyKenny _Kenny thirteen_ ) rooms. How could Melanie be _standing_? And where had she gotten her new clothes? A shirt with long sleeves none of the Children had seen outside of a book (pink? Was it called pink? It wasn’t red, red was blood and it didn’t look like blood) and pants that weren’t too big and shoes that didn’t have holes and a strap over the heel. _How could Melanie be standing?_

Joanne opened her mouth to ask but only a broken croak came out, and then she began coughing.

The other Children shifted uncomfortably in their chairs, suddenly all too aware of how dry their throats were as well and how much their gums hurt.

Melanie smiled.

-

Then Melanie undid the clasps that tied the Children to their chairs (two feet two hands and a head for a Child) and then there was nothing holding them down anymore.

And maybe they hadn’t realised until they took those first shaking steps, supporting the overwhelming weight of their bodies by grasping the backs of the chairs that had bound them, that maybe they hadn’t only been waiting for Ms. Justineau to come back. Maybe they hadn’t only been waiting for another story, another day, another meal.

Maybe they’d been waiting for _this_.

-

Tom was the first of the Children (not Melanie, she wasn’t like them anymore. Something had _changed_ , _she_ had changed, and now she carried a bat and wore her skin like a Gun) to see the Sun, and he had to shield his eyes with his hand because of the light.

It was even brighter than Ms. Justineau.

Somehow, that thought made him cry.

 


End file.
